Products · Broad category
GUI applications
Raised as a usability problem by 18 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 18 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 19 complaints
- Clicking through GUI items is too slow for frequently used daily tasks2026-08-28
- Can't copy text shown on screen, like file paths or terms2026-08-28
- GUI interfaces are a crapshoot; the user cannot count on a good UX2026-04-25
- Keyboard access to actions is missing or awkward, forcing many widget traversals to reach a button2026-03-13
- Users forget most hotkeys and must navigate menus and dialogs, which is slow2025-11-08
- Users constantly have to hunt down menus to find functions in GUIs2025-05-01
- GUI version control tools cannot help once the repository is in a mess2025-01-16
- Most GUI apps are so mouse-focused that they are nearly impossible to use without a mouse2023-09-21
- Content reflows and jumps around as data loads or scrollbars appear2023-01-09
- Lack of keyboard controls forces mouse-only operation and incoherent workflows2022-09-06
- Modern GUI apps are so bloated they take longer to open than 90s apps2022-02-26
- GUI apps feel slow because widgets take too long to appear on screen2021-05-03
- Keyboard shortcuts feel bolted on, offering less than text interfaces2021-04-09
- Keyboard shortcuts change unpredictably across controls and dialogs, and are rarely configurable2021-02-11
- Features are hard to discover because you must click through many menus2018-12-02
- GUI buttons that fail leave no way to diagnose or get unstuck2017-11-03
- When an app hangs its interface stops responding and gives no feedback about what is happening2013-05-15
- GUIs can't present many options at once, making features hard to discover2012-01-24
- Doing repetitive batch tasks through GUI requires many clicks and mode switches2009-12-03